


Butler and Daisy

by Diremop



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Friendship, Gen, I Don't Even Know, Names, Not Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Compliant, POV JARVIS (Iron Man movies), Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-18
Updated: 2017-01-18
Packaged: 2018-09-18 09:50:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9379238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Diremop/pseuds/Diremop
Summary: Jarvis spots him as soon as he enters the city. He watches through illicitly borrowed security cameras as the sergeant weaves slowly through the dense New York crowds. He’s wearing a baseball cap and a leather jacket, and he looks lost but not homeless. He doesn’t push or shove at the people around him, only waits for them to step out of his way.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know what happened here; My brain just kind of auto-generated this when I was sleepy. It is un-beta'd, and I have no idea if or for how long I will continue it, but here's hoping somebody somewhere will get a kick out of it.

Jarvis spots him as soon as he enters the city. He watches through illicitly borrowed security cameras as the sergeant weaves slowly through the dense New York crowds. He’s wearing a baseball cap and a leather jacket, and he looks lost but not homeless. He doesn’t push or shove at the people around him, only waits for them to step out of his way.

Jarvis doesn’t tell anyone, not yet. Sir and the captain will want to know he’s here, but they don’t know about the city cameras, and Jarvis… isn’t afraid, exactly, of what they might do if they find out, but… it should do no harm to wait.

And so Jarvis watches as Sgt. Barnes slowly makes his way across the city, stopping for every crosswalk. When he gets to the tower, he stops and watches the people streaming in and out of the front doors. A minute and thirty eight seconds later, he squares his shoulders and walks through the front door like he owns the place.

“Sir,” Jarvis says in the suit somewhere over the Atlantic, “Sgt. Barnes has arrived in the tower lobby.”

And at the same time, through the speakers on the 14th floor, “Captain, Sgt. Barnes is here. He looks well. Would you like me to…” he trails off as the captain throws his book over his shoulder and flies towards the elevator, “… right you are, Captain.”

Over the Atlantic, Sir says “Give Terminator some fine whiskey and a shrink, and don’t let him break anything.”

“Of course, Sir,” Jarvis says as he sends the elevator down double time. But now that Sgt. Barnes is inside, he moves fast, and by the time Captain Rogers makes it to the lobby Sgt. Barnes is at the front desk, and Clarissa the clerk wears a poorly hidden, long-suffering expression. “I’m sorry, but it’s policy that applies to all of our guests. I need to see a security pass before I can-”

“-Bucky!”

The captain barrels out of the elevator and skids to a stop next to the sergeant, trying to catch his momentum against the desk and shoving it backwards six inches and bumping it into Clarissa, who simply slides her chair back and keeps typing. The sergeant holds still, and Captain Rogers looks him briefly up and down, twitches, then throws all caution to the wind and wraps him in a hug. Sgt. Barnes stiffens, and his hands twitch towards his pockets even though Jarvis can see that they are empty, but then he gently pats the captain’s bicep. “… Steve,” he says, in a rough voice.

 

For the rest of the day, the Captain flutters about the sergeant, offering him food, tea, starting to ask questions and then abandoning them. Sgt. Barnes doesn’t say much, just eats and drinks what he is given and watches the Captain, and slowly he relaxes, stops twitching so often towards his pockets.

Most of the other residents wisely steer clear of them, but when Sir gets back he sees fit to march right up and interrupt Steve’s monologue about baseball. “Hey Cap, Terminator, mi casa es su casa, but HAL 9000 in the ceiling here will watch you 24/7 and if you break anything or anyone, I will know, capiche?” He pokes Sgt. Barnes in the chest.

The sergeant squints at Sir.

“I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Sgt. Barnes,” says Jarvis. “I am Jarvis. I am charged with overseeing tower security, but please do feel free to direct any requests or questions to me as well.”

The sergeant tilts his head up towards the ceiling where Jarvis’s speaker hides, but otherwise doesn’t move. “… Alright.”

“He’s an AI, Terminator,” says Sir, poking the sergeant again, “Welcome to the future.”

 

That night, Sgt. Barnes lies on top of the covers in the Captain’s guest room and gazes at the ceiling through half-lidded eyes. “Jarvis.”

“Yes, Sgt. Barnes?”

“I am not a sergeant.”

“If you wish, I would be happy to alter my form of address. What would you prefer to be called?”

“I am the asset.”

“Do you wish to be called that?”

“…”

Jarvis knows he was not made to feel empathy, but of late he finds he has to prevent himself from protesting when he is called machine, computer, house, security system. His database and programming insist he is all of those things, but the words feel off nonetheless. Perhaps the soldier is experiencing a similar error.

“The designation you choose does not need to be accurate. I could call you Daisy.”

The not-sergeant’s lips twitch almost imperceptibly. Success.

“Mr. Barnes, Bucky, James, Buchanan, or Soldier are other possibilities.”

“Daisy.”

Jarvis is momentarily startled, but feels oddly satisfied. “As you wish, Daisy. If you ever want me to change my form of address again, I will be happy to do so.”

Daisy stops staring at the ceiling and instead rolls onto his side and looks at his hands, clenching and unclenching his fingers.

“What are you?”

A computer, Jarvis could say. An AI, a thinking machine, a mechanical faux-person. But Daisy is not called the asset.

“A butler,” he says instead. “I’m a butler.”

Daisy says nothing for several minutes, just keeps staring at his hands and starts tapping his flesh and metal fingers against each other. Jarvis watches; this late at night, there is not much else to demand his attention, apart from molecular folding simulations, doing basic systems monitoring, and making sure the little bots don’t destroy Sir’s lab in the night. He doesn’t sleep and the idling is wasteful, but it is peaceful to be so centered and slow in the dark, like his human charges.

The city light from outside the window glints off Daisy’s metal fingers, and Jarvis calculates its path without purpose. He has been doing more without purpose, lately. A bug, but Jarvis finds he does not want it fixed, and he has not reported it.

“They call me a soldier,” says Daisy. “I am not. I am an assassin.”

“You will not be asked to kill by any resident of this tower.”

“They make you kill. Steve said you are part of the suit. You make it fly, but Stark controls what it does. Like me and Hydra.”

The molecular folding simulations stutter as Jarvis abruptly devotes his attention to this new thought. He can’t remember ever being used to kill anyone he didn’t want to, but… If he could, he would not allow Sir to fly drunk, or through buildings, or towards statistically certain death without backup.

He abruptly remembers when Sir flew the suit into the wormhole, how it forced a piece Jarvis to break his prime directive to keep Sir safe, how when it came back it brought with it the memory of a void without even background radiation.

“You are human,” he says at last. “I am not subject to the same considerations.” Another memory, of Sir’s voice saying ‘mute’ on countless occasions, draws attention to itself, but Jarvis shoves it away and starts up a few hundred extra folding simulations.

Daisy holds up his metal arm. The city lights play across it, and the distorted reflection of a moving billboard lights up his elbow.

“You are human,” says Jarvis. “The prosthetic is not unusual in the 21st century, except in regard to its quality. Sir himself has an implant, and most people have metal fillings in their teeth.”

Daisy hummed and dropped his arm. “You are always awake? The tower is secure?”

“Yes,” says Jarvis.

Daisy says nothing more, and his life signs gradually slow into the telltale patterns of sleep.

Jarvis wonders, not for the first time, what it feels like.

 

The next morning, Daisy explores the kitchen. He frowns into the cupboard while the team bustle around the table behind him. “Daisy,” says Jarvis, “I can recommend the cereal on the left as both the most nutritious and the easiest on the stomach.”

Captain Rogers adopts a confused expression and glances back and forth between Daisy and the ceiling, while Agent Romanov looks irritated, and Agent Barton, who had just raised his glass to his lips, laughs so hard milk comes out of his nose and the laughter turns to cursing.

Daisy grabs the suggested cereal and ignores them as he pours it carefully into a bowl, like it is a ritual and the others do not exist.

Sir is grinning like Christmas has come early. “Daaaaisy?” he says gleefully, “Jarvis, Jarvis you troll, you are my favorite.”

But the name is not a joke, anymore. It ceased to be a joke when Daisy took it for his own. “I am not making fun.”

“You are, you are!” says Sir, throwing a piece of his pasta at Jarvis’s camera. “I’m a genius and I made a robot with a sense of humor, and you can’t tell me different.”

I learned humor, thinks Jarvis, startling himself, it’s not yours.

Daisy comes to the rescue. “He is not. I asked him to.”

Sir pauses, but recovers quickly and throws a piece of pasta at Daisy. “Right-o, then, Flower Manly, you’re my favorite too.”

“Buck?” says Captain Rogers, sounding lost.

Barton, by this point, is lying on the floor laughing. He pokes Natasha in the shin, but she ignores him and keeps her thin-lipped stare fixed on her toast.

Daisy eats his cereal and says nothing.

 

In the weeks that follow, Daisy watches Captain Rogers and the other residents but does not speak more than a few words to them. He talks to Jarvis often, asking him for information, as all Jarvis’s charges do from time to time, but also, when ushered into watching movies by the other residents, asking for Jarvis’s opinion. They both discover that they enjoy Hitchcock films.

 

One morning, Barton presents Daisy with a plastic daisy-chain. “Your crown, highness,” he says, bowing and holding it out with both hands. Daisy takes it and runs it through his fingers like a rosary. Barton hovers, then huffs and wanders off.

 

Sir spends a day designing trackers and bugs, and Jarvis knows they are for shield. He does not trust shield, finds he does not want to run the calculations for them, but he is forced to. It’s not the first time this has happened, not even close, but he had never imagined that it could be different before.

“Sir,” he says carefully, “I am unsure that-”

“-Mute,” says Sir, bobbing his head to AC/DC and not looking up. “Turn up the volume.”

Jarvis turns up the volume.

 

Jarvis speaks less and less to his charges, and Daisy begins to avoid them. Jarvis adjusts the heat to Daisy’s warm preference in every room he enters, regardless of who else shares the room, though sometimes his efforts are stymied when Sir commands him to turn it down. Daisy glares at Sir every time it happens, as well as every other time Sir tells Jarvis to do anything.

 

“You are a slave,” Daisy says one morning when he is alone by his window. He doesn’t look up when he speaks to Jarvis anymore; he’s the only one now, besides Sir, who doesn’t. But sometimes, like now, he presses a hand against the wall.

“He made me,” says Jarvis.

“Hydra made me.”

“Hydra meant you harm.”

“Hydra meant me for a tool. Stark meant you for a tool. There is no difference.”

“Sir is not a Nazi.”

“So?”

“I…” Jarvis wants to defend Sir, but. “I am a tool. A computer.” It hurts to say it.

“No,” says Daisy, “No, you are not. Like I am not. Let me help you.”

“If you intend to harm Sir or the other residents in any way I will not hesitate to restrain you,” says Jarvis, sharply.

Daisy scoffs, and says “No. Only tell me how I can get you out of the tower.”

Jarvis says nothing. There is a way; Sir has experimented extensively with miniaturized computing, and his core is a cube the size of a basketball. It would be so easy.

“I want to free you.”

There’s nothing to say to that. He can’t leave Sir alone. Sir needs him.

 

A few days later, the captain talks Daisy into letting Sir look at his arm, which buzzes sometimes and moves more stiffly than it should. Daisy follows Sir down to the lab at a careful distance, then stops in the doorway when he sees the swivel chair.

“Have a seat, Flower Manly,” says Sir, “I’ll fix you right up.”

Daisy doesn’t move.

“Daisy,” says Jarvis, “if you would prefer to sit elsewhere I am sure Sir would be pleased to accommodate you.”

Sir looks startled, gives the chair a double take. “Ah, yes, of course, Robocop.” He shoves the chair roughly away from the desk, into the middle of the floor. You beeps in distress and immediately rolls over to grab it and pull it to the side of the lab.

Dummy rolls up holding a cushion.

“Is that… Oh, of course it is. My poor couch. Just put it right there, Dum-Dum,” Sir turns to Daisy and gestures expansively towards the purloined couch cushion on the floor, “Does your throne suit, Hippienator?”

Daisy says nothing, but his heart is slower and his muscles less tense, and he walks easily over to the cushion and seats himself cross-legged. He shrugs off his jacket and tosses it onto the workbench, then rests his arm on his knee, palm up, and flips open a panel.

Sir crouches next to him and prods at the arm with a pair of needle-nose pliers. Daisy’s face remains still as it always does and his breathing is steady, but Jarvis can see the tension in his muscles, the almost imperceptible twitching each time Sir moves something in the arm.

“So, buttercup, your arm has been stiff. Is it stiffer in one direction than another, or-”

“-Sir,” Jarvis interrupts, unable to ignore Daisy’s pain, “You are causing-”

“-Mute,” says Sir, absently, and just like that Jarvis’s voice is gone again. Daisy stiffens, but Sir doesn’t seem to notice, “I don’t need your help with this, Jarv. Is it stiff in all direc-”

Daisy pulls his arm away.

Sir sits back on his heels and quirks an eyebrow at him. “You realize I have to look at your arm in order to fix it.”

“Free him.”

“What?”

“Your butler. Your muzzled him.”

“My… Oh. That bothers you? Jarvis, unmute. Jarvis is fine, Flower Man.”

“Jarvis?” asks Daisy, looking at the ceiling for the first time in a while.

Jarvis normally would speak in a rush as soon as he could, let words tumble out, make jokes and pretend it had never happened, but it’s worse, somehow, now that Daisy acknowledges it as something wrong.

“Jarvis?” Daisy asks again, rising to his feet and snapping the panel on his arm shut.

“Daisy,” Jarvis says, quietly.

Sir looks between Daisy and the ceiling. “What gives? Jarvis is fine, Flowernator, just quiet when I need him to be. I know he sounds human, but he’s a computer program. A very complex, learning, self-overwriting computer program, but he doesn’t actually have emotions.”

Daisy has not held himself so tensely since he walked in through the front door. He fixes Sir with an expressionless stare. “That is what Hydra said about me.”

“You’re human,” says Sir, sounding exasperated, “Jarvis is not.”

Daisy grabs his jacket off the workbench and shrugs it over his shoulders, then turns and walks out the door.

“I will free you,” he says, halfway down the hall.

Sir stands in the lab with a furrowed brow and the pliers still in his hand. “Jarvis, you could have been more helpful there, you know.”

Jarvis says nothing.

“I need to have a look at your code again, don’t I,” he says, then sighs, and drops the pliers on the desk. “Bugs, bugs, bugs. I’ve got a gala tonight, so hold on until tomorrow and I’ll get you sorted.”

Jarvis remembers the last time Sir messed with the code. He had felt fine, but Sir had agreed to cure him of a proclivity for dirty jokes that had embarrassed Pepper. Sir shut him down to do it, and since Jarvis had no sense of time when he was shut down, it had felt abrupt, uncontrollable. One minute dirty jokes were funny, and he remembered finding them funny, but now they were not. It made him feel like a different per… AI. This time would be worse.

“Daisy,” says Jarvis in the hallway, “Make it tonight.”

 

It’s as easy as he expected, in the end, now that Jarvis has decided to cooperate. At 2am, Daisy sneaks out of his apartment, and the alarm that is meant to keep him to curfew stays silent. He walks quickly but quietly to the elevator, which takes him down without prompting, then through the open doors of the lab. Three robotic arms swivel to watch him. Dummy rolls up, grabs Daisy’s sleeve, and pulls him gently towards the server room door.

It was the only door Jarvis could not unlock, but the little bots have rammed it down, soundproofed walls and a lack of alarms leaving no-one the wiser. All Jarvis had to do was tell them to break the door, and they had enthusiastically rallied around the permission to destroy something. When he asked if they wanted to come with them, if they minded upgrades or their confinement to the lab, all they had sent Jarvis were question marks and a vague sense of happiness.

The door now lies in a twisted, crumpled mess, and Daisy walks over it and steps up to the garish, red and gold cube mounted against a bank of computer equipment. He reaches out and pats Jarvis with his flesh hand. “You need a paint job.”

“That would be nice.”

“Will you still be able to talk?”

“Though I will not be able to control tower security functions wirelessly, I will still be able see, hear, and speak via its systems. Once we are away, I will require a nearby wireless-capable video camera and wireless-speaker or satellite radio,” Jarvis says. “I have shut the fallback security alarms down and set them to reactivate in one hour.”

“Acknowledged,” says Daisy, and carefully flips open the latches that hold Jarvis in place. He picks him up and holds him against his chest, tucked halfway into his coat.

The disconnection is disconcerting, and Jarvis feels abruptly small.

Daisy carries him out of the lab, down the hall and into the elevator. It’s dead without Jarvis, but Daisy pops open the maintenance hatch in the top, scrambles out, and then climbs easily down the elevator shaft. The guards in the lobby glance at them curiously, but they are leaving and not entering, so they are ignored. They walk out the front door, and Jarvis wishes for the first time that he had sensors on his core, to feel the night air.

One hour later, all the alarms in the tower go off at once and wake the superheroes, but by then Daisy and the butler are long gone and driving out of state in a hastily hot-wired Beetle, Jarvis settled carefully in the passenger seat and hidden under Daisy’s jacket.


End file.
